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Tuesday, July 3, 2012

New Oe/BX/1E Monster: Giant Two-headed Snake

This week's new monster is much more about the illustration than the monster (though, like giant spiders, I'm sure you can never have too many giant snakes). For a while, I feel like some of my illustrations have not been living up to their potential, so I'm "re-dedicating" myself to trying to raise my bar. I also thought you'd enjoy seeing my process. At the bottom of today's post, you'll find a composite image showing the 3 stages of this drawing: 1) sketch, 2) inked drawing, 3) computer final.

Snake, Giant Two-headed

DESCRIPTION
Giant two-headed snakes are little more than what they sound like. Unlike the amphisboena, a giant two-headed snake features its two heads on the "same end" of its body, essentially "splitting at the neck" into twin heads which are able to attack 2 different opponents up to 10' apart from one another. These ominous ophidians reach lengths of 30' and share traits with both vipers and pythons. Each head is capable of delivering a poisonous bite that does 1-8 points of damage on a successful "to hit" roll and kills in 4-12 rounds (unless a save vs. poison is made). Additionally, if both bites are successful against a single opponent, the snake is able to constrict around that opponent, delivering an additional 2d8 points of damage per round, beginning automatically after the second bite. The snake can be "uncoiled" if enough characters (6+) of sufficient strength (16+ ea.) can grasp the beast at each extremity (2 characters at each head and 2 characters at the tail end). This "uncoiling" process will take 2-5 rounds to complete.